4 ms·

> The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish things that they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. Pretending that they do not is

> The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish things that they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. Pretending that they do not is ignoring reality. Really? I'd say regardless what their wishes might be, pretending that they can is ignoring reality (at least in some cases). You change or retract things as you do in accounting - by issuing amendments. Not by pretending you never published something, but by updating what you published (i.e. publishing a new version). > Beyond that, things in the real world are almost always mutable and removable because lawyers can show up on your doorstep with a court order to make them so, [...] If the court says 'stop serving that', you had better do so. How does that have anything to do with immutability? Immutability is not "The president is Obama", it is "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Obama". You can trivially say that "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2020 the president was Trump" without contradicting the previous statement. You can even forget what your belief was at 01 Feb 2020. And if the ministry of truth knocks on the door, you might end up to believe, at 01 Feb 2025, that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Trump. This way, you satisfy the ministry's desires, without violating immutability in any way.

tristanstcyr 7y ago
That's an idealistic argument. Sometimes you just need to delete things and there's no negotiation possible. Whether that makes sense to you or not as an engineer or scientist doesn't matter much. There are tons of things that humans want that "don't make sense" but that you need to conform to regardless. A great example of this is typically the law.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  That has nothing to do with physical reality - it's only about feature set of human-designed systems.
- virgilp 7y ago
  "Immutable" does not preclude deletion, that's what I'm saying. Indeed, to delete something can simply mean to publish a new version with no content. If there's no reference to the old version, it will get 'garbage-collected'/ 'forgotten' by the system.

tristanstcyr 7y ago

That's an idealistic argument. Sometimes you just need to delete things and there's no negotiation possible. Whether that makes sense to you or not as an engineer or scientist doesn't matter much. There are tons of things that humans want that "don't make sense" but that you need to conform to regardless. A great example of this is typically the law.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
That has nothing to do with physical reality - it's only about feature set of human-designed systems.
virgilp 7y ago
"Immutable" does not preclude deletion, that's what I'm saying. Indeed, to delete something can simply mean to publish a new version with no content. If there's no reference to the old version, it will get 'garbage-collected'/ 'forgotten' by the system.